You said:

No, I want to stop the US from bombing, torturing, raping, stealing, and causing massive destruction. Something that you don’t seem to care about, as long as it doesn’t effect you. Your the one trying to do a bunch of “akshully, Biden blew up less kids, so he’s actually pretty cool!” rhetroric.

So you implied that I support Biden doing those things, which I never said that I did. If that doesn’t include Israel, then what the fuck are you talking about?

You need to define what you mean by “support” in this context. I voted for Biden and am happy to say that his administration is better than Trump’s. That’s the extend of my “support” that I’ve expressed for him.

It’s pretty clear at this point that you’re either a complete fucking idiot or a troll, and either way, I don’t really care to continue engaging with you about this. Grow up, man.

I mean, Trump can relate. Don’t forget he had a Chinese spy at Mar-a-Lago a few years back when he was hiding top secret and classified documents in the shitter.

Yeah, so this is the “no true scotsman”/purity test I was referencing. You’re assuming I’m a “liberal” because I believe there’s substantial distance between Democrats and Republicans on issues that have real impacts. I think that’s a wild leap in thinking. FWIW, I don’t care what you call me, but assuming that I, for instance, support the genocide of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government is a fucking wild leap in logic.

But it’s not about whether you’re hurting Patel’s feelings, it’s about whether you’re hurting the feelings of other people who might have a similar condition. The vast majority of people who will see this meme are not Nazis.

Who is the liberal that you’re railing against, exactly? Are you saying that anyone who votes for a Democrat is a liberal?

We’ve lost the narrative, I think, so let’s see if we can refocus here at bit.

The conversation is about whether voting matters, whether the blue wave matters. You acknowledge that there’s a difference between candidates, but that you don’t believe that difference is “substantial.” Logically, two things can be true: Biden could have caused “massive destruction” and still be substantially better than Trump. So just saying “Biden caused massive destruction” is not sufficient to prove your point. All of the “destruction” points you brought up happened under Trump, as well, right? But the things we got under Trump that we didn’t have under Biden include:

• USAID cuts that will cause hundreds of thousands of deaths globally.
• Secret police with arrest quotas terrorizing ordinary people.
• A war in Iran that is causing the deaths of thousands of innocent people.

No one expected Biden to be some kind of radical leftist candidate who would enact sweeping leftist changes. But we expected less “fascism, genocide, torture, murder, etc,” and that’s exactly what we got.

You might argue that voting for Biden perpetuates this system and that you want to “send a message” to the party. Well, that’s a convenient POV to hold when you’re not the one who is suffering the consequences when the system is controlled by the worse party. You’re not going to die from the USAID cuts. You’re not getting arrested by the secret police. You’re not at risk of being bombed. “Some of you will die, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take” kind of attitude, right?

I think the reality is that you are exercising the “no true Scotsman” fallacy here. You want to believe that you’re the smartest person in the room and that you have some kind of secret knowledge about how “both parties are the same” that “liberals” haven’t discovered yet, and you revel in “blowing people’s minds” with your “radical” views. There’s a word for what you’re doing: edgelord. And you fully embody that spirit, bud.

If there are leaks, I’m sure you can find a source for them and share with the class.

I don’t know if Democrats will restart those programs. I think the realpolitik of what these midterms actually mean is that Trump is no longer a “kingmaker” in his party, and without that leverage he won’t have control over every Republican in congress. And because of that, he’s going to have to behave or risk getting removed or possibly worse.

I don’t know what the exact path forward is, but it’s not like nuclear weapons will disappear if the U.S. dissolves. There’s still inherent problems of the human condition that we have to continue to struggle with as a species, IMO. Even if we wipe out all of the existing imperialist states, more could – and IMO, would – arise unless we figure out how to solve some of those underlying problems.

In the meantime, I think it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that things have gotten better over time. This last vote was refutation of imperialism. They said themselves, it was a reflection of dissatisfaction with the imperialist war in Iran. If we don’t believe in democracy, then what do we believe in, exactly? Do we just cross our fingers and hope we get benevolent dictators? Granted it took far too long, but the imperialist country did eventually give up slavery. Racism has objectively decreased over time. A smaller portion of the world dies from starvation and preventable disease. The world is getting better over time. The past 10 years have been a shitshow, but the median person is certainly better off today than they were 100 years ago.

I mean, we can dive into the specifics on each one of the points you made, because several of them are obviously misleading, but I don’t think that’s a good use of our time because…

If you don’t think Trump and Biden are equally shitty, then what is the argument? The debate is about whether or not voting matters. You’ve just said one candidate is shittier than the other, so I guess you prefer eating shit to taking an hour out of your worthless life to cast a vote?

Here’s a little sneak peak for ya: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths/

What “massive devastation” did Biden cause? Be specific, please.

You’re falling for the all-or-nothing logical fallacy. You can bucket both Biden and Trump as being shitty, but that doesn’t mean they’re equally shitty.

You’ll need to provide sources for any of those claims. Ofc we should be skeptical of anything a corporation says, but Discord explicitly said they don’t use messages for age verification: https://discord.com/safety/how-discord-is-building-safer-experiences-for-teens. I’d be hard-pressed to believe that if that weren’t true there would be leaks.

But not voting, or voting for fascists, absolutely will never fix anything.

I think there are more accelerationists on this platform than you might realize.

You’re talking about emotional impact alone. Someone who lives with you, shares a bank account with you, and owns property with you obviously has more ability to control you and abuse you.

Granted, but my point isn’t necessarily that the magnitude matters. It’s the fact that judging something as a “romantic” relationships generates these gray lines that make moral discussions like this one so blurry. Many people have relationships that blur the lines between romantic and platonic.

Are you trying to claim someone cannot dilute someone else’s agency? that’s the whole problem with a power imbalance in a relationship, that your partner can use their power to isolate you from your agency.

No, but again, you can’t really draw a clean line around this problem. We all have diluted agency as a result of constantly taking in sense data: we’re products of our environments. I don’t think you can cleanly say that every relationship between a 44-year old man and a 19-year old woman is exploitative in nature. Or if you do believe that, wouldn’t you want to push for that to be codified as law? And if so, how would you codify it?

When did I say I wanted to do that?

Aren’t you implying it? It’s not as if Billy Corgan physically abducted Chloe Mendel. She willingly chose to become his partner. Either she’s wise enough and has enough agency to make decisions for herself, or she’s not. If it’s the latter, then you have to deal with the outcomes of that. I don’t buy that this is exclusively a “romantic relationship” problem. If the point is that 19-year olds are too ignorant to realize that a 44-year old man showing interest in them is “predatory,” surely that problem extends to other components of their agency.

That is a big “if” you are relying on. What if that 43 year old was love bombing them and telling you on the side that they were going to eventually leave them a broken mess? How often do you think these relationships are genuine compared to predatory. How do you tell the difference in the beginning?

Literally the person in this photo. They’ve been together for 13 years, right? I don’t know how you tell the difference in the beginning, but if you tell someone they can’t do it (which, you’re effectively doing by publicly shaming their relationship), then how many people are being deprived of a meaningful relationship. Why are you the arbiter of when someone has agency and when they don’t?

You can literally validate any abusive relationship with that same thinking because it’s made to exclude context.

Dang, I actually thought you were capable of critical thought until this comment. This isn’t about validating my argument, it’s about invalidating the argument that disgust is a reasonable tool for determining morality of an action. That’s one of your points, as evidenced in the next line.

When did I say they can’t be happy. What I said is that he is a disgusting and predatory man.

I guess I don’t understand your point at all then. You’re saying that even though Corgan is “disgusting and predatory,” his actions may well lead to happiness for him and the person he way “praying” on? On what planet does the word “pray” mean to make someone else happy? Oh no, I’m being prayed on by the compliment fairy! Keep it away!

I think you’re so focused on the older person here that you are failing to realize that you’re reducing the younger person to an automaton. The 19-year old is wise enough to make other life-changing choices: voting, taking out bank loans, making major purchases, choosing a career, choosing friends, deciding to take drugs, deciding to have an abortion, etc., but they’re not wise enough to decide whether or not it’s good for them to date someone who is older than them? I don’t think you can have your cake and eat it too.

Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

“Weathering the storm on foot” in your analogy means millions of people dying. You understand that, right?

Lol, they ignored every point I made, but I should have to address every bullshit point they make. That’s how the game works? They asked for an example of a war ending under a Democrat, I provided one, and then… crickets. Y’all are fucking clowns.

I didn’t say Carnegie wasn’t a massive asshole. You’re purposefully misreading my statements here.

It takes all of maybe an hour to go vote. The current administration is literally secret policing people off the streets and letting them rot and die in horrendous conditions. That’s likely very likely to stop now, but we’ll see.

The reality is that you’re just too intellectually lazy to investigate the differences between the parties. It’s not great that the choices are center-right and far-right, but center-right is objectively better than far-right if you’re a left-winger and not an accelerationist. Your lack of voting has a measurable, negative impact on the lives of other people, and you know it.

I mean, you can stop engaging any time you’d like, as well.

I can easily explain why fascism is bad to a Nazi. It would eventually ground out at some kind of fundamental difference in our world views. You could do the same here if you cared to, but you don’t.

The reality is that you don’t actually have a moral perspective here. You don’t actually have a problem with Corgan’s actions, you have a problem with his wife and enjoy slut shaming her. That’s the real reason white knights like you jump onto these posts and virtue signal for everyone. “Oh, the poor adult woman can’t possibly think for herself. She’s clearly a victim and a prostitute who is selling her body for access to wealth and power.” And then you’ll ofc, rightly, go on to defend sex workers.

You’re a fucking joke, bud. Zero critical thinking skills. Just whine and cry to everyone else that the mean Internet person is making valid points that you’re too fucking stupid to refute on your own.

So how old does a woman need to be in order to make decisions for herself? 25? 30? If your moral convictions here are so strong, then elucidate them.

I mean, sure, but those monied interests are in favor of secret police and mass surveillance. The other monied interests seem at least moderately sane. Like, I’m not gonna dome Mark Cuban or anything, but he’s a significantly less shitty person than Musk or Zuck. Andrew Carnegie built a shit-ton of libraries. I’d rather have us all involved in making those decisions, but I’ll take a barely-benevolent billionaire over the a sadistic dystopian nightmare one any day.